Have I missed the flood thread?
 

G'day Gentlemen,

have I missed the flood thread?

Really brilliant effort by the helicopters and crews.

Am right in the middle of Gloucestershire so it is nice to see the helicopters put to good use by the emergency services.

Thank you to everyone involved :D:ok:

Cheers
WSPS

No this is the first time it's been mentioned on this forum

Have to agree with you it's been good to see ALL the Helo's working for the good of everyone.:D

Justin

Yes those SAR crews must have been working nonstop!:ok::ok::ok:

Fantastic work chaps. Sadly not much on the TV though.

Well i hope you can now rest nicely.

keep up the good work chaps :ok::ok::ok:

Yea i seen some seaking footage on the news hovering above tricky areas, very well done i must say.

I thought that we hadn't heard from Crab in the last couple of days.... ;)

Keep up the good work, Crab. :D:D:D


PS Any chance of an 'on the scene' reportage when you get the chance, please?

Haven't heard too much state side, however, have been kept up to speed by family back home.. Well done SAR crews! been flat out.. Keep up the great work :ok:

Not guilty this time. I've just abandoned a camping holiday in Cornwall due to the weather forecast and now it doesn't look as black as it was painted - doh, when will I learn:{

The boys and girls from Chiv, Valley, Wattisham, Lec and Lee do seem to have been very busy with the floods and there may be more to come - I will pass on words of praise to the crews involved - thanks for your support.

Question for the SAR helicopter guys. With a situation such as Tewksebury, when you are ‘on site’ for days, what local re-fuelling facilities do you have to arrange? What scheme do you have for ‘immediate’ deployment/response of fuellers? Ta:)

forget,

Two likely options for a protracted incident:

If there's an airfield with Jet A1 within easy striking distance, it will be opened for the SAR helos by the ARCC who can generally count on the goodwill of the airfield operator (for instance Barrow/Walney, who turned out at midnight in February when there were four thirsty Sea Kings attending the Grayrigg train crash).

If there's not a suitable airfield, a bowser will be dispatched from the nearest (usually military) airfield and positioned somewhere suitable - this is not uncommon in the more remote parts of the UK, eg the Boulmer bowser at Harbottle during the fire-bucketing at Easter this year, and the Kinloss bowser on the Inverness-Ullapool road, fuelling the Lossie and Stornoway helos, after the Stornoway mail aircraft crash a couple of years back. These are just two incidents I was involved in which I can recall off the top of my head - there must be plenty of others.

TOTD

Thanks TOTD :ok: I suppose, in the UK, you're never that far from a friendly bowser. If push did come to shove is the Sea King cleared for any 'commercial' fuels? Tesco's apart.

Well, Staverton and the two Bristol airfields are hardly a long way away.

Refuelling
 

For info
Footage of BBC helicopter at Gloucester (Staverton?) showed a SAR machine there yesterday

I was on scene for most of the weekend with Police 40.

SAR assets - fantastic as usual although comms and tasking procedure always a weakness.

Fuel - Gloucestershire Airport opened for fuel 24/7 for the duration - rotors running - immediate priority - fantastic service, thanks and well done.

News gatherers were well behaved, kept out of our way and got some outstanding footage. Thanks for a good job.

My main gripe was with the airborne rubberneckers - please keep away ! :mad:

The Harrier and the C130 over Tewkesbury yesterday were totally unnecessary. :eek:

What limits - er think that was you

well done

SAR Ops
 

Good to see that the effort is appreciated.

Hopefully the situation will improve at some point...

WSPS

The TDA that went up Tuesday was due to an "encounter" between a Harrier and a SAR Sea King.......darned rubberneckers!

Sorry
 

Should have said in my original post - this referred to Sunday 22nd

Chutefull - 'tis better to remain silent and have people think you are a fool than to post garbage on pprune and remove all doubt'

With apologies to (I think) Mark Twain

Chutefull,

Had you been able to fly you may have occasionally seen small rescue ribs taking two or three victims at a time to saftey.

But the problems with ribs are;

nasty debris unseen below the flood water.

operating a small boat in fast runing waters as is occasionally the case in these floods is hazardous.

deployment is not as rapid as a helicopter

finally the distances involved to get victims from their island to just the nearest dry land is often half a mile whereas a helicopter can take them directly to a more suitable site for onward transportation.

On Monday a caravan park was evacuated using small boat to ferry victims a short distance to a SAR heli landing site which then ferried them a mile or so to saftey. The heli carried 6 or so at a time and made multiple trips.
This would have taken hours in the rescue rib and one of the victims was a baby.

A team effort.


Mickjoebill